New P4 i865PE mobo

[Fuzz]

Gonna be getting a new P4 mobo based on the intel i865PE chipset.

At the mo I'm looking at the Abit AI7 and the Asus P4P800/ Deluxe mobos.

Anybody got either of these mobos or do you recomend something else?

I wanna be able to boot off SATA and the SATA should have raid as I'll be upgrading to that soon.

Thanks in advance.

[War2879]

I an Asus fan, so I can only comment on the P4P800 mobo.
As you know the Asus P4P800 series uses the Intel I865PE chipset, which in itself is one of the better chipsets on the market.

However I would like to draw your attention to the Intel I875P chipset. This chipset is the only one to date to incorporate IPAT (http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/pat.htm) (Intel Performance Acceleration Technology). This new technology will see performance increases of between 3-5%, but it will cost a small premium for it.

The benefit of the P4C800 series (three mobos in this series) is they all come with S-ATA and RAID 0/1 as standard, so you may even save a bit of money by buying the basic model. Obviously the better mobos have more features.

Although Kustom only stock the P4C800-E Deluxe at the moment, Im sure if you ask Graeme nicely he may be able to provide you with others from the series.

[Graeme*Kustom*]

Originally posted by War2879


Although Kustom only stock the P4C800-E Deluxe at the moment, Im sure if you ask Graeme nicely he may be able to provide you with others from the series.

You don't even have to ask nicely, but of course it is always preferred (and may reflect any quotes ;)).

Just let us know if there's a specific board you're after, we can usually order in any Asus product pretty quickly.

[Fuzz]

Thanks for that guys!

just one thing I've been to the Asus web site and seen the difference between the standard and the deluxe but what is the difference between the deluxe and the deluxe-e/ e-deluxe?

Thanks!

[War2879]

Ive checked the Asus web-site and the P4C800 Deluxe has very similar specs to the P4C800-E Deluxe.

The only physical difference I can see is the Northbridge cooler on the P4C800-E Deluxe sits parallel to the CPU whilst the cooler on the P4C800 Deluxe sits at a 45 degrees angle.

Although the specs between the two mobos are very similar, there is one important difference between the two. The P4C800-E Deluxe uses the ICH5R (I/O Connection Hub) Southbridge whilst the P4C800 Deluxe uses the ICH5 Southbridge.

It may not sound like much, but this basically means the P4C800-E Deluxe uses Intels CSA 82547EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller to control the LAN whilst the P4C800 Deluxe uses the 3COM 3C940 Gigabit LAN PCI Controller incorporating the Virtual Cable Tester™ Net-Diagnosing Utility.


One more small note :-

Although the Asus P4C800 states that it supports RAID it should be noted that this only applies to HDDs using the S-ATA interface.